How To Change Color Of The Windows 7 Basic Theme For Old Computers And Laptops

Although Windows 7 comes with the "Aero theme" enabled by default, it still includes the "Classic Theme" that was the default theme in Windows 2000, and was still available in Windows XP and Windows Vista.  The Classic Theme has a major advantage over Aero for underpowered laptops, desktops and netbooks.

Mine is an example, yesterday it came from repair with the windows 7 ultimate installed but despite of my computer being a fast computer with a lot of RAM memory, the video card memory is no big thing, so using Aero is out of question.

Well, I had to stick with the basic theme then but that pale blue was getting me sick, so it was time to find a way to change that ugly color and I did. Since I googled the problem and noticed lots of people struggling with this same problem I  am going to explain with details how I changed the Windows 7 Basic Theme color of my computer.

It’s not complicated, if you pay attention you will see that is actually a piece of cake… so let’s get started:

First of all you have to download the UniversalThemePatcher that can be found here.

You can operate in normal mode. Do not need to enter safe mode.

Choose the corresponding patcher based on you Windows:
 * For 32bit (x86): UniversalThemePatcher-x86.exe
 * For 64bit (amd64): UniversalThemePatcher-x64.exe

Require administrator rights. You right-click the exe file and select Run as Administrator. Once you execute the exe file 3 files need to be patched on Windows 7 and these files are: uxtheme.dll, themeui.dll, themeservice.dll. 

After patch, Restart computer for changes to take effect.

With the computer on now it’s the time to change the color and for this you need to change the aero.msstyle file that is found on C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Aero. For that you need to “Take Ownership” of the file. Download and install TakeOwnership for context menu.

After that you go to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Aero right click with the mouse and click Take Ownership, now you Copy ONE of the aero.msstyles that you find in the folder of the themes you download and replace the old aero.msstyles with the new one. Don’t forget to make a back up copy of the old aero.msstyles in case you want to get back to the default color in the future.

Now you just need to reboot and enjoy!

In my case I chose the basic black and it looks like this:

Ps.: I found some theme colors and will share them with you:

1. Windows7 Build 7068 Basic Blue
2. Windows 7 Basic Black
3. Windows 7 Basic Black Theme
4. Windows 7 Basic Modified Color (Mega color pack)